People come to piano lessons to learn performance skills requisite to play in various situations. Some want to be able to play in recitals, while others are happy playing for themselves, their family and friends. Successful performance can be referred to as enactive attainment, or one's perception of competency derived from engaging in mastery experiences. Since enactive attainment is the most influential source of self-efficacy, the utmost care must be taken to ensure the student's attempts to perform are successful. Zinn Piano Program accounts for the perceived threat of the performance situation, how the children feel about what they play, cognitive development level, and a myriad of other individual factors for each and every student.

Performance accomplishments can be a major boost to self-efficacy. However, perceived failure either during or after performance can be a lingering source of self-doubt. The Zinn Piano Program takes steps to ensure students are not only ready in terms of their musical preparation, but also they feel they are ready. For instance, we do not let students to perform in recital situations without prior experiences of playing in other, low-threat performance situations. We also do not have students perform pieces that above their current skill level. Finally, we do not "force" students to perform to "teach them a lesson" (a tactic employed by numerous instructors in the music field). When children are forced to “go through with it,” particularly if the child is not ready, it "sets the stage" for negative performance outcome, acute feelings of anxiety about future performance, and at worst, a traumatic experience.

Traumatic experiences during recital performance is an all too common occurrance in the music world. Perhaps you took lessons as a child and remember having to play in recital. We've heard variations of the following scenario from many adults, recollecting the experience decades later, as if it happened yesterday. They recall in detail how they felt, both in terms of their physiological responses (rapid heart-rate, cold sweaty palms, etc.) and the intense feelings of panic. They explain signs of the human stress response at work, preparing the body for "fight or flight" but in this situation, the "freeze" response was initiated. During the stress response, the brain chemistry gets altered during this process in ways that thoughts, memories are "locked up" and the process of performing the piece gets interrupted. They stop suddenly  in the middle of their piece, and they try desperately to figure out what comes next. In that moment, they experience intense feelings of embarrassment by their inability to continue. They "muddle" through the rest of their piece, after having "messed up." After the experience has ended, their self-efficacy takes a "nose dive." Having "failed" to perform, they no longer believe in their ability to perform in the future. They attribute the failure to internal reasons and the negativity of the experience generalizes out to all aspects of the piano lesson. They no longer want to continue, having lost any desire to learn to play like their cousin, older brother, or sister. It's not long afterward they quit piano lessons, having decided they are not "cut out" for piano. As adults, they still fault themselves, attributing their stopping piano to having lack of what we call "talent."

Zinn Piano Program prevents the above scenario from ever taking place. Performance is a skill, and like any skill, it must be shaped by a series of smaller steps and more gradual approximations. That is why our students participate in bi-weekly group classes, low-threat peer group situations, during which they play their pieces for their peers. The students gain performance skills through group performance, but also through simply watching other children their age perform their pieces successfully. Students learning from observation are learning by vicarious experience, another important source of self-efficacy.  Children often request their parents put them in piano lessons when they see someone else perform that they admire and they desire to emulate that person. Students will often choose pieces to learn on the basis of hearing it played well by another student. They imagine themselves playing the same piece and develop a strong desire to pursue such goals. By having them perform in group classes, students come to learn the performance skills they need to play confidently and reliably across any performance situation.

We tend to think of performance as an artistic endeavor or what takes place in a recital. But performance can refer to any task, such as playing newly learned pieces, playing scales, arpeggios and chord progressions, or playing over-learned pieces for the instructor during the private piano lesson. Below is a partial list of what performance can mean, and what we do about it.

The Zinn Piano Program prides itself on the development of solid performance skills for all students.  By mentoring and training our students to know when they are ready, when to say “no,” when they are not ready, and putting them in multiple low-threat performance situations, they develop feelings high self-efficacy and learn coping skills to requisite to perform well. Self-efficacy beliefs operate especially in performance because people will only perform well as a function of what they know plus what they believe they can do with what they know. Feelings of competency are derived from these beliefs as a key factor in their ability to perform at peak levels.

Peformance situations are enactive experiences we take numerous steps to ensure the children are successful. Failure undermines self efficacy, especially if it occurs before a good sense of self efficacy has been established. Performance successes generally raise beliefs of personal efficacy; failures lower them. However, what really lowers the beliefs is their cognitive appraisal or interpretation of the situation. Students can regard the "failure" as information, something from which we all learn from to do better in the future. By help students reframe the situation, looking at every performance as a learning experience, they view the process of performing as a serious stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks.